How are Disruptors Changing the Digital Playbook?

Image by macrovector / Freepik

The high pressure of this disruptive era yields gems in creative smarts and innovative strategies that take the advertising industry’s digital playbook to another level. Whether it is flipping the game on consumers by making them chase ads; or transforming a super app that changes the game in food delivery service; these disruptors have found their eureka moments. 

Digital disruption looks set to intensify even further, according to the latest report on 2023 Media Trends from Carat, dentsu X and iProspect. It revealed key trends that will impact the speed and intensity of digital commerce evolution and the growth of gamification and its related platforms.

In terms of content, the shift to digital platforms shows no signs of slowing down especially in the video-on-demand and gaming sectors, with gaming becoming mainstream and gaining prominence on content sites to drive repeat users. The report also spotlights the diversification of sites, apps and platforms, where consumers now have more options than ever before, flipping the switch on “always shopping” mode. This leads to more retail platforms and sites converting into advertising platforms, which adds value to brands by generating valuable first-party data. The rise of super apps is also important to note, as they continue to build ecosystems that anticipate and cater for more comprehensive user needs.

The Ad That Made Consumers Hunt for It

CHEP Network did a really smart thing when they got consumers to chase down ads with a vengeance, specifically for Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip4 ad. Not only that, they made Google their friend and turned its search algorithm in their favour. But it was a highly intricate campaign to pull off on the back-end and it demonstrated CHEP’s digital smarts in aligning creativity with effectiveness. 

The idea for the team was to get around the audience’s dislike for ads. “They hate ads, and they even hate sponsored posts from content creators. We needed a clever way to get them Googling like mad about the device so they’d see all the organic bits and pieces that creators we weren’t paying were making about the Z Flip4. The internet was flooded with positive reviews, we just needed to get this stuff in front of people. Luckily, the young whipper snappers of the world are pretty tech savvy, so challenging them to engineer their algorithm into showing them only Samsung content seemed like a feasible task,” says Joe Ranallo, senior copywriter.

The theory behind this campaign seems straightforward: to create enough hype to pump up the search volumes or specific keywords, target the correct keywords with the correct search ads, and then retarget people who have seen the correct series of videos, shares Joe and Will and Will Winter-Irving,  senior art director.

The mechanics behind that, however is another story of digital knowledge and expertise to overcome the challenges. They shared that one of the main challenges in getting the campaign to work was that each element needed to be heavily integrated in order to be successful. “If anything was out of alignment, the entire campaign would collapse. We really left it up to the community and content creators to get the word out about the campaign. The content was then used through our paid media channels to promote the launch. 

“Media and tech worked collaboratively in solving ways to successfully protect the codes, the hidden winning page and the “hidden clues”, which we were forced to make public at the hand of Google. We knew people would turn to our social channels when they couldn’t figure out how to get the ad to target them, so our social and community management team was key in keeping people engaged,” says Will. “For a campaign which was highly technical and reliant on the performance of a beast like Google, we were forced to engage manual processes and the use of humans for success, 9 times out of 10.”

It also involved intricate questioning by the CHEP team to work out the details. “Everybody knows that you can target keywords with ads and use Youtube to retarget, but how well do you really know your search & programmatic? Exactly how many unique users do you need in a combined audience to retarget on DV360? Is that number different if you buy Youtube via Google Ads instead? How long does it take for Google to review a low-volume search term before it decides whether a keyword carries eligible impressions? What is the theoretical number of custom audiences you can combine? 

“The success of media is almost always about scale and efficiency, so to practically run a rarely seen ad presented a unique challenge, and it’s a little bit more the art of experience over platform policies and science,” concludes Joe. 

This campaign set a benchmark for Samsung Australia. The campaign generated 41% higher search interest than the ‘unpacked’ global product announcement, which is the highest search volume in the history of the Foldables range.

A SuperApp that Disrupted the Food Delivery Space

Robinhood is one of Thailand’s fastest-growing food delivery apps and all-in-one travel service platform. It collaborated with Accenture Song to drive its business transformation, which includes product management and strategy and customer experience.

Robinhood was initially launched “without concern for profit”, and Accenture Song was selected as the partner of choice to unlock the potential of digital advertising as a revenue stream, says Ramesh Rajandran, SEA Financial Services Lead at Accenture Song (pictured below).

“We helped the startup keep its promise of prioritising profitability for small businesses and affordability for consumers. We took the lead in shaping the super app ad engine and running operations to monetise and manage the data. With a robust digital advertising-as-a-service offering, Robinhood can more easily manage its ad programme, fill available ad space and better leverage data to help merchants and evaluate the customer experience,” adds Ramesh.

Evolving as a food delivery app offering cash-free, contactless payment during the pandemic, Robinhood is now “a super app that provides benefits beyond food delivery, including travel, mart, parcel delivery and soon, ride hailing in Thailand”, says Ramesh. By focusing on a “life-centric” strategy as opposed to being product- or customer-focused, Robinhood disrupted the food delivery industry in Thailand, and surged to a #2 ranking in Greater Bangkok in less than two years.

Riding on the app’s self-service advertising capabilities, Accenture Song will work towards onboarding more than 300,000 small, local businesses in Thailand, which will increase their visibility on Robinhood and help them connect with even more customers. This initiative would complement Robinhood’s long-term roadmap to expand into more areas of business, including financial services.   

Ramesh shares that super apps such as Robinhood will gain even stronger momentum in the near future as consumers lean towards one-stop platforms that are easy to use and provides extensive features. “As businesses, including Robinhood, look for new playbooks for sustainable growth amidst economic uncertainty, turning the focus to look at how they can meaningfully contribute to their customers’ lives will be beneficial in the long run. According to our research, businesses that do so see an annual growth rate of nine percentage points higher on average than their lagging peers, who are likely to shrink year-on-year,” he concludes.